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What did you see tonight?


Ags

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Was out under 4.9 NELM skies this evening with the new APM 16x70 and the Heritage 130 P. Spotted with both R Leporis, ("Hind's Crimson Star") (report in the "Double and Variable" section). A short stop with the 130 P at M 42 showed the Trapezium stars quite sharp, but no trace of stars E or F. Over to Orion's shoulder to revisit the  11.7 mag planetary NGC 2022, the "collarbone nebula", a personal favourite. With mags of 100x-150x (Seben Zoom+2.25 Barlow), it was not easy to make out this evening, and I needed continuously averted vision to make out the 25" disc, that didn't show any details. I finished after 1h30min with the comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), close to Orion's shield; already considerably fainter in the 16x70.

Thanks for reading

Stephan

Edited by Nyctimene
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I've just about picked up the zodiacal light from this location before. But this evening it was more zodiacal Sh1te than light.  

These are from the phone 

IMG_20230220_235409_(1500_x_2000_pixel).thumb.jpg.ab92a1d205a5c511dd915ca819a7ed3f.jpg

 

IMG_20230220_234621_(1050_x_1400_pixel).thumb.jpg.ea4739fdac5953f35a108f4af6478673.jpg

Laying the phone flat was better

IMG_20230220_234545_(899_x_1200_pixel).jpg.ed97e51e95715e431ad86b3571a815e5.jpg

Edited by scotty1
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Out with some old favourites last night.

Really wanted to use the new 82 degree 24mm EP, which gave me some stunning views.

Had chance to view before later cloud, it was surprisingly mild, but did pick up a bit of dew after a while.

Double Cluster (breathtaking)

Andromeda Galaxy (just fuzzy in my area)

Orion nebula

Mars (some detail)

Pleiades

Almach (beautiful  gold and blue, this must be the nicest double?)

The main trouble last night is that my next door neighbour has decided to install a massive Led PIR security light pointing at where I normally set up in the back garden 😩.

So I had to hide behind the fence in the corner trying not to trip the light on.

luckily I’m on very good terms so shouldn’t be to hard to get it switched off at the appropriate time.👍

Flashing Telrad is very useful for alignment of the CPC, which performed very accurately. 

Wish the sky was black and not grey.

 

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On 21/02/2023 at 10:17, Andy ES said:

Almach (beautiful  gold and blue, this must be the nicest double?) …

Almach really is my favourite coloured double, nicer than Albireo (“Jewel of the Sky”) in my reckoning, and a proper double to boot, whereas Albireo is an alignment only.

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An ultimately satisfying session tonight with my 12”: a slew of faint galaxies in Ursa Major and Coma Berenices, including Markarian’s Chain. And I confirmed finally that I was observing M45 Pleiades nebulosity rather than sudden misting of the eyepiece.

Full report to come tomorrow.

Magnus

PS and earlier the Moon with Earthshine Jupiter and Venus were stunning. I got some decent pics I think but will have to await tomorrow to get them off my DSLR.

Edited by Captain Scarlet
linked to obs report
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In Atlanta, GA this week for a work conference. Is Bortle 9, forecast cloudy and my diary is full of work stuff so I had zero expectation of being able to take advantage of the more southerly latitude - I was delighted to be greeted by the sight of Jupiter, new moon & Venus (below) on exiting a cab to an event tonight, thrilling to see so high above the horizon and I duly bored/amazed my colleagues with what they were looking at (and made my judgements about them based in reaction 

…). 

 

 

 

5DDCE13D-12D7-4CA7-8B8D-CD501739AC5D.jpeg

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Early start this evening. Out at 5:00pm with the 70mm F/6 to have a quick look at the Moon (Petavius and rille looking nice), Jupiter and Venus against quite a bright twilight sky. Best time to see Jupiter's surface details I think. The Mare Crisium is beautifully presented this evening.

Little scope on a standard photo tripod did well even at 131x 🙂

20230223_173812.jpg.d7d432ca5c9cfb3f0c39b95cac6ffbeb.jpg

 

Edited by John
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Just had a twilight session with the 4". Venus is a bit low (close to the rooftops) so a tad wobbly. Jupiter looks good with some nice belt detail.

The moon is awesome with the x2.5 Powermate and 9mm ortho for x198. Seeing is a bit unsteady but plenty of detail on offer. Crater near the top (Endymion?) has some nice shadows across it. The ridges on Mare Crisium are very prominent with this illumination.

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14 hours ago, SuburbanMak said:

I duly bored/amazed my colleagues with what they were looking at (and made my judgements about them based in reaction 

 

I’ve had a few non Astronomically or Scientifically minded people look through my telescope and I’ve concluded that a nice Saturn, Jupiter with moons or a close up of the Moon will always get a WoW! response. 😁

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Had a quick pootle around Cancer last night. the first clear night here for ages, it seemed. Seeing was average but transparency was pretty poor; the sky looking pale and washed out.

Still - haven't had the dob out for a while and had some new (to me) eyepieces to try out.

 

Σ 1245 - easy split at x40 - both yellow but one much brighter. 

Tegmine (Zeta Cnc) - the tighter pair were elongated at x150 but at x240 were occasionally notched but the seeing wasn't good enough for anything better.

Σ 1291 (57 Cnc) - Obviously notched at x240, but seeing too poor to split

Σ 1298 (66 Cnc) - Nice easy split.  Quite a difference in brightness but nothing too tricky.

M67 - Used this to compare the new Delos 12mm to my old Vixen LVW 13mm. The former framed it better and gave a more immersive view, but the LVW was so much more comfortable to use!

 

Also - Iota Cnc - Very easy split with lovely looking larger gold and smaller cool blue. One of these 4 - see this really nice image and past post by  @orion25:

image.png.b02f8d8a957ac9edab449558ef3e6913.png

 

Edited by Pixies
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Still having a great time here with my titchy 70mm refractor 🙂

Rigel, Eta Orionis, Alnitak, Castor and other nice pairs split. M42, M43, M78, M1 and NGC 2392 nebulae showing quite well.

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) spotted quite easily at 8th magnitude.

Very happy with this little scope - good star test, little CA and one hand portable on the Slik Master Classic photo tripod 😁

 

Edited by John
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11 hours ago, John said:

Still having a great time here with my titchy 70mm refractor 🙂

Rigel, Eta Orionis, Alnitak, Castor and other nice pairs split. M42, M43, M78, M1 and NGC 2392 nebulae showing quite well.

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) spotted quite easily at 8th magnitude.

Very happy with this little scope - good star test, little CA and one hand portable on the Slik Master Classic photo tripod 😁

 

Hard to tell from the photo, what scope is that? I must admit I love my ZS73 for its ability to punch above what its aperture would suggest. 

PS. Nice to see you are back posting again John! 

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11 hours ago, Pixies said:

Had a quick pootle around Cancer last night. the first clear night here for ages, it seemed. Seeing was average but transparency was pretty poor; the sky looking pale and washed out.

Still - haven't had the dob out for a while and had some new (to me) eyepieces to try out.

 

Σ 1245 - easy split at x40 - both yellow but one much brighter. 

Tegmine (Zeta Cnc) - the tighter pair were elongated at x150 but at x240 were occasionally notched but the seeing wasn't good enough for anything better.

Σ 1291 (57 Cnc) - Obviously notched at x240, but seeing too poor to split

Σ 1298 (66 Cnc) - Nice easy split.  Quite a difference in brightness but nothing too tricky.

M67 - Used this to compare the new Delos 12mm to my old Vixen LVW 13mm. The former framed it better and gave a more immersive view, but the LVW was so much more comfortable to use!

 

Also - Iota Cnc - Very easy split with lovely looking larger gold and smaller cool blue. One of these 4 - see this really nice image and past post by  @orion25:

image.png.b02f8d8a957ac9edab449558ef3e6913.png

 

How on earth did you take those?!  They're fantastic.  Are they images? 

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9 hours ago, badhex said:

Hard to tell from the photo, what scope is that? I must admit I love my ZS73 for its ability to punch above what its aperture would suggest. 

PS. Nice to see you are back posting again John! 

Thank you Joe.

The scope is a little Altair Starwave 70 that I picked up recently. Nothing exotic by any means but it seems to have a well figured objective, CA is kept under reasonable control and the scope seems well put together, plus it's small and light.

 

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4 hours ago, John said:

Thank you Joe.

The scope is a little Altair Starwave 70 that I picked up recently. Nothing exotic by any means but it seems to have a well figured objective, CA is kept under reasonable control and the scope seems well put together, plus it's small and light.

 

Lovely. I think it's the same as the TS-Optics scope I was originally going to get a couple of years ago, but the lead time was too long so I plumped for the ZS73 instead. These little F6ish 70mm ish scopes occupy a great little niche IMO. Only downside I would say to the ZS73 is that I think it's a bit heavier than the 70mm, but as they excel at low power/widefield views you can still get away with a pretty lightweight tripod/mount setup, and everything fits in one backpack!

Edited by badhex
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Just spent a good hour and a half looking at the Moon. It was a gorgeous terminator, but while looking at Petavius I noticed a fine rille that I'd firs seen last night. It ran from between the outer wall of Petavius and the crater Wottesly, straight between Shellius and Shellius A, then became more difficult to follow. While studying this rille, a second finer but shorter rille running parallel extended from the outer wall of Wottesly towards Shellius A but didn't appear to reach it. Then I noticed the rille from Petavius outer wall was split into a Y which connected it also to Wottesly.  The floor of Petavius was fascinating too and covered with intricate tonal detail as well as physical features.

From my site the high tree line from the woodland to my south, south west, means I lose the Moon quite early, and because the sky was strewn with starlight and looked transparent, I thought I'd try for M1.  Using a 16mm Masuyama eyepiece  and sweeping just north of zeta Taurus, the supernova remnant was found very quickly. In the past I've often seen detail within M1, but tonight it was not so easy. Perhaps observing the Moon for an hour had messed with my night vision, but finding M1 was a good indicator of the transparency of the sky, especially while using a 100mm. 

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I'm currently installing a 12"SCT mounted on an EQ6 Pro to temporarily replace one of our 16"SCT's whilst the 16" is waiting to be upgraded.  Yesterday I collimated the 12" and roughly polar aligned it, the sky was too hazy to see Polaris.  Had a brief look at the Moon, Jupiter and Venus.  Today was much better, the haze was gone and visibility was quite good which enabled me to refine the collimation but I was thwarted from nailing the polar alignment.  The illuminated reticule in the polar scope was on maximum setting so that I couldn't see Polaris and not having the manual to hand I couldn't alter it.  I did improve the alignment somewhat by eyeballing along the mount and Betelgeuse defocussed to fill the field at 300x showed only a slight drift over 15minutes, so getting there.

Despite the seeing being rather wobbly I was able to see the results of the better collimation when viewing the Moon, Jupiter and Venus were suffering from altitude sickness by then.  Completely forgot to have a look at Mars!      🙂   

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Having trouble polar aligning, too! Clouds though! 

I'm next to the (north facing) coast. There's a strong northerly breeze but a high wall shelters the garden from the wind. I could see up to about 40 degrees so Polaris was hidden. I was waiting for the clouds to quickly blow over, as they are moving pretty fast. But even after 10 minutes, Polaris was still hidden! 

The low clouds are forming as the air hits the land. So it's like a never-ending roll of clouds. I've never noticed that before!

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First light with a used Skywatcher Mak 90 I bought some time ago but only just set up. Around 1830 managed to get a beautiful view of Jupiter and four moons with a 32mm plossl. Colours were startlingly good. Unfortunately only managed five minutes before it disappeared behind some houses. Next up was the moon. First time funnily that I have spent time looking at it, but figured that the Mak would be a good tool. Was not disappointed. Using a Celestron moon filter, had some lovely sharp views across the border between the light and dark. Don't have a moon map, but enjoyed tonight enough to get one! 

Interesting limitations of the Mak90. Very poor at looking at Pleiades, which was disappointing. Be interesting to see the comparison with a 127. 

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